Cheon Seong Gyeong: Episode 340
Cheon Seong Gyeong Book 11: Ceremonies and Holy Days
Chapter 2: Church Services
Section 1: Church Service and Prayer, 23-35
(23) I established pledge service, and, amazingly, all of you are able to have pledge service with me every day. By showing that True Parents honor this ceremony, I want blessed families to respect this ceremony and pass it on as a tradition to their sons and daughters. You must teach your children that pledge service is a crucial time for the family. Through this ceremony, we can create bonds of heart, connecting the children with their parents face to face in the family and also connecting them vertically with the True Parents. Altogether these relationships form the four-position foundation and link three generations as one. This is the time when the four-position foundation and the three generations can become one. You must teach this to your children.
(24) All of you should do pledge service with your family every Sunday. It is the ceremony in which blessed families make their declaration. Satan cannot invade such families. That is why we recite My Pledge. We are to be proud of the one sovereignty, proud of the one people, proud of the one land, proud of the one language and culture centered on God, proud of becoming the child of the One True Parent, proud of the family who is to inherit one tradition and proud of being a laborer who is working to establish the one world of the heart. By this proclamation, you announce that you have no relation to Satan's world. It is a proclamation ceremony that lets you resolve the mistakes you committed or responsibilities you did not fulfill during the week.
(25) How beautiful it is to see a mother and father holding their child's hands and sitting together in prayer! We must set the tradition in our families of offering bows in the morning to greet God and True Parents. Offering three bows signifies that we go to meet True Parents, who then bring us to meet God.
(26) Even if you are alone, when you offer a bow to God and True Parents, do not think that you are doing it by yourself. When a man comes to offer a bow, he should think he does it with his wife standing beside him. Likewise, when a woman comes to offer a bow, she should think she is doing it together with her husband. If the man and the woman think this way, it shows they are united as one. It signifies that blessed members should become totally one.
(27) All families should display True Parents' picture. The family should bow before it together, forming a four-position foundation. Three generations ought to bow. The four-position foundation involves three generations. Three generations should offer a bow—grandfather and grandmother, mother and father, and children. After establishing a four-position foundation, when you bow in the name of True Parents, you are outside the domain of the Fall. In this situation, because God has direct dominion over you, you have established a realm of liberation. Hence all the good spirits in the spirit world can come to earth and protect you, just as the archangel was meant to protect Adam's family. We have entered such an age.
(28) When you bow during pledge service on Sunday, to whom are you bowing? You are bowing to me, your Teacher, and to your family. You bow to serve and attend the Heavenly Parent and True Parents as the King and Queen. You bow to inherit the kingship from them. You are busy and occupied with many things, yet what could be more important than that? Children should bow to their parents, and parents should bow to each other. You parents must teach filial piety to your children. In this movement, the lives we lead should be models to others.
(29) When you offer a bow, you who are on earth are not the only ones offering it. Because we focus on the spiritual realm, the heavenly kingdom, and God, it is certain that blessed families and the angelic world become completely one and bow together. Furthermore, if you are sincere and earnest in heart for your beloved ones, then your mothers and fathers, even your friends who have gone to the spirit world, can be brought down to join you. You can bring down more than 72 generations and as many as 120 generations. You have not yet been able to establish a national-level foundation, but once you do, all this will be possible.
(30) The Family Pledge never existed in history. Now that the Family Pledge has appeared, families under Satan's dominion living on the earthly plane will have no place to go in the future. The appearance of the Family Pledge signifies that I met the standard of having indemnified four thousand years of history through the forty years that have passed since the victorious foundation made during the Second World War was lost. On this forty-year foundation, the kingdom of heaven can now begin on earth. The recurring phrase in the Family Pledge is, "Our family ... by centering on true love." You recite this phrase repeatedly throughout the Family Pledge. "True love" here refers to God's love. It means that we are connected to true life and true lineage by the true love of God and True Parents.
(31) Previously, we recited My Pledge, but from now on, we will recite the Family Pledge. In history, there never was any such thing as the Family Pledge. This is an amazing fact. Now that the forty-year course of restoration through indemnity has been brought to an end, the time has come when the world can move centered on me, Rev. Moon. This is why the Family Pledge has emerged. The worldwide unified Christian cultural sphere established after the Second World War was destroyed, but now, centered on me, it has been restored, although conditionally, based on my victorious worldwide foundation.
(32) The term "Family Pledge" has appeared for the first time in history. The Family Pledge was established because the family was lost by a man and a woman. Therefore, God and humankind must establish the model family that can be welcomed based on the original standard of the family that has nothing to do with the Fall. Unless we do, we cannot build the heavenly kingdom on earth and in heaven, which is composed of families that God can rejoice with and dwell with on earth and in heaven. Hence, it was inevitable that this pledge would be established.
(33) The objective of the Family Pledge is to create the backbone of the family. What are we trying to do through the Family Pledge? We are trying to attend the Heavenly Parent, who is like the backbone of the family. If we find His true love and love Him, God will come and visit our family. We should bring our mind and body into oneness and become couples whose minds and bodies are united. Then God will come and visit us. If our mind and body are fighting, God will never come to us, not ever. True love cannot exist under such circumstances.
The mindset of a church leader
(34) A witnessing leader or pastor is like the high priest of his or her region. A church leader prays for the people, even losing sleep. As the high priest makes offerings in order to save the people, the church leader must toil and offer full devotion. To find the necessary answers, the church leader must become one with God. He or she does so by becoming a sacrificial offering. Church members are not the sacrificial offerings; the pastor is. From now on, your leadership should be comprehensive, not just intellectual. Members are the flesh, and pastors are the bones. The flesh should cover the bones well so they will not be exposed.
(35) After working hard for a public purpose, I fall asleep without realizing how tired I am. Then, in the morning, I wake up totally refreshed. From this experience, I realize, "Ah, this is the principled way to live a life for Heaven!" If I were to think, "I slept only three and a half hours last night when I should have slept at least six hours," my entire body would feel as if it weighed a thousand or even ten thousand pounds, and I would feel pains all over. That is why I tell you not to have such thoughts.
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